I am a total Mac newbie, but didn’t just fall off the apple cart. I know a must have, indispensable item when I see one; that is why Quicksilver was the first Mac app I dragged into my Application folder. For the past week I’ve been bumbling around trying to learn as much as I could about it, and wanted to share two cool (to me anyway) tricks I discovered by accident.

1. Dock the shelf:
3. Invoke Quicksilver (control+spacebar is the default hotkey)
4. Open the shelf (alt+command+S)
5. Drag the shelf window to the edge of your screen, and release
6. Move your pointer away from the shelf. After a few seconds the shelf will slide out of the way until you mouse to the edge where you dropped it.

I discovered this trick because I have gotten in the habit of dropping links, and things on it. But I realized that there was no clear button that I could click to empty the shelf for me, and there was nothing in Quicksilver itself–say a Clear Shelf action–that would perform the task, and Remove is always grayed out on the context menu. So here I was with fifteen or twenty items on my shelf and no idea what to do. So after lots of hunting and pecking, here is what I found.

2. Clear the shelf:

• Invoke Quicksilver
• Open the shelf
• Click on an item
• Drag the item to the trash can on the dock